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Monday, September 20, 2010

Why Biblical Literalism is Wrong Part 4: Errors

The Old Testament contains a lot of extremely un-scientific and un-true statements, which is odd for a book that is supposed to be literally true and infallible. As I said in the previous instalment the bible was written by uneducated (by today's standards) men, so we really get what we should expect. I would not expect to see anything that is scientifically sound in 2000-3000 year old writings. Here is a short list of some errors to demonstrate my point.

-The Israelites took 40 years to make a journey that would have taken less than two weeks to walk. Exo 16:35
-Disabled people are made that way by god. Exo 4:11
-There are four-legged fowls Lev 11:20
-Bats are birds Lev 11:13
-The Israelites went from a total population of 70 to a few million in only a few generations. Num 1:45-46
-Leprosy is caused by the wrath of god or the malice of Satan Num 12:10
-There were giants that were 14 feet tall Deut 3:11 (Yet somehow not a single skeleton has ever been found)
-Joshua destroyed Jericho before it even existed, and said that whoever rebuilt it would be cursed. Too bad that it still exists today. Josh 6:26
-Joshua destroys the city of Ai, but it was already an abandoned city centuries before this supposedly happened. Josh 8
-The stars helped people in battle. Judg 5:20
-The sun goes around the earth Judg 5:31
-The earth rests upon pillars 1 Sam 2:8
-God is the cause of thunder and rain 1 Sam 12:18
-God is the cause of earthquakes 1 Sam 14:15
-Earthquakes can be caused by people singing and shouting loudly 1 Kings 1:39-40
-Pi =3 1 Kings 7:23
-Droughts are a punishment for sin. 1 Kings 8:35

I think that's plenty. There are hundreds more, I didn't even go through comprehensively, and didn't even get through half the Old Testament. It goes without saying that a book that is 'literally true' and infallible would not contain egregious errors of this kind. Some are no doubt metaphorical (or are they?) like the verses mentioning that the earth rests upon pillars, or that there are four corners to the earth. It seems like the others actually mean what they say they do, that Joshua destroyed cities that didn't exist and that bats are birds.

Come on shred, DM's got a point - reading, analyzing, and critical thinking are ABSOULTELY the best reasons to kill yourself...goddamnit I reread what I just typed and I don't think it's scarcastic enough. Oh well, till next time.

I would say that biblical literalism is sometimes wrong. Much on that list is true and scientific (ancient science I'm meaning).

The Bible was written in ancient times and should be read as though one was still in ancient times to fully understand it.

The 40 year thing was meant to be a punishment as far as I'm aware. Enough time for the people God didn't want in 'Teh Promised Land' to die off or something. You could hard out spend 40 years walking a 2 week trek if you were going in circles and/or figure eights for a bit of variety.

The fowl thing is poor translation. The original texts meant winged creatures, in this case insects I think? ..... hold on... don't insects have 6 legs not four? I'd assume 'all fours' was understood as 'sick, it's all on the dirty ground and stuff - don't eat it'. Probably shouldn't be understood as "insects have four observable legs".

Bats are birds - another poor English translation. Bats are winged creatures is what the original author would have scribed. Which they literally were/are.

How many million is a few million and how many generations is a few generations? I'd be keen to see the math. Numbers 1:45-46 specifies only one figure - approx. 600,000. Is that 600k men? Or 600k MEN...

Deut 3:11 only describes the giant's (probably literal) bed. Or do we assume that these giants were also six feet wide?

I'm in agreement with the Joshua stuff being odd. A few dating errors there to say the least. 'Someone made up a ton of lies!' would be taking it too far to the other extreme in my opinion.

The sun literally goes around the earth the same reason Mars and the rest of the universe were included in the heavens/stars category of the creation account. Naked eye observations. Stand under the obelisk on One Tree Hill on a cloudy, windy day - it literally appears to be falling on you.

All things mentioned that came from God and/or Satan as punishment, etc. are unfalsifiable. One might argue the Agent vs. Mechanism viewpoint which is just as unfalsifiable.

Singing causing earthquakes is clearly an instance of metaphorical hyperbole describing (one would assume) a literal event. The people of the day wouldn't have understood that phrase to mean a 7.0 quake - neither should we. Here's a literally true 21st century anecdote - I went to the BDO '08 (I think it was) with Blair, we watched Rage and 30,000 people shouted 'mother fucker' along with Zach de la Rocha. "The earth rent". TRUE

1 Kings 7:23 isn't giving a lecture on the specifics of mathematical constants. They are rationally rounding to whole numbers - and their math is literally correct.

So in conclusion... from that list, everything mentioned in fact is true and scientific (I repeat, ancient science) except we have a few vague dating errors to do with Joshua's conquests.

I would say that biblical literalism is sometimes wrong. The Bible was written in ancient times and should be read as though one was still in ancient times to fully understand it.

The 40 year thing was meant to be a punishment as far as I'm aware. Enough time for the people God didn't want in 'Teh Promised Land' to die off or something. You could hard out spend 40 years walking a two week trek if you were going in circles and/or figure eights for a bit of variety.

The fowl thing is poor translation. The original texts meant winged creatures.

Bats are fowls - is a good example of this poor translation. Bats are winged creatures is what the original author would have scribed. Which they literally are.

How many million is a few million and how many generations is a few generations? I'd be keen to see the math. Numbers 1:45-46 specifies only one figure - approx. 600,000. Is that 600k men? Or 600k MEN...

Deut 3:11 only describes the giant's (probably literal) bed. Or do we assume that these giants were also six feet wide?

I'm in agreement with the Joshua stuff being odd. A few dating errors there to say the least. 'Someone made up a ton of lies!' would be taking it too far to the other extreme in my opinion.

The sun literally goes around the earth the same reason Mars and the rest of the universe were included in the heavens/stars category of the creation account. Naked eye observations. Stand under the obelisk on One Tree Hill on a cloudy, windy day - it appears to be falling on you, literally.

All things mentioned that came from God and/or Satan as punishment, etc. are unfalsifiable by definition. So skeptics can dismiss them without evidence and religious optimists can have faith in the supernatural.

Singing causing earthquakes is clearly an instance of metaphorical hyperbole of (one would assume) a literal event. The people of the day wouldn't have understood that phrase to mean a literal 7.0 quake - neither should we. Here's a literally true 21st century anecdotal event - I went to the BDO '08 (I think) with Blair, we watched Rage and 30,000 people shouted 'mother fucker' along with Zach de la Rocha. "The earth rent".

1 Kings 7:23 isn't giving a lecture on mathematical constants. They are rationally rounding to whole numbers - and their math is correct.

So, from that list we don't actually find many errors or "un-true" statements at all, except for some sketchy dating regarding Joshua's conquests and some speculation on an Israelite census and King Og's bed dimensions.

There is no such thing as magic... it's sad, I know, my whole childhood I came to release that I am never going to be a wizard... so as a child I came to realizes that make believe doesn't help anyone and their are no wizards.my question is, why the fuck do adults still play make believe.

I'm fairly sure that they didn't actually walk in the desert for 40 years. If they made the journey at all (which is a matter of some debate, as there is no archaeological evidence to suggest that the Israelites were ever enslaved by the Egyptians in the first place), then their 40 years of wandering left no traces. I think that the exodus account is vaguely based off something that happened dozens of generations before it was written down. The story was passed down orally, and in its current state doesn't resemble anything that literally happened. 40 is a symbolic number.

I somehow don't think it is a poor translation that created the errors to do with fowls/insects and bats. I haven't looked up the original Hebrew words, but in all the translations besides the ones that completely butcher the text (Living translation and the Mess) what is written is factually incorrect. Fowls and/or insects do not walk on all fours. Period.Bats are contained in a list of 'fowls' or 'birds'. If the original text had meant 'creatures that fly' I'm fairly certain that at least one of the hundred or so English translations would have picked up on that.

It is 600,000 adult males that are capable of going to war. This census was taken just after the Israelites had supposedly escaped out of Egypt. When The Israelites went into Egypt there were only 70 people according to Exodus 1.70 to millions in a few generations.This only compounds the problem with the 40 years in the desert, because millions of people would have left at least some trace of their existence.I can't imagine any reason why they would mention the size of his bed if it weren't supposed to be a gauge of how tall he was supposed to be, can you? They were writing about 'giants' and then mention the size of his bed. Nevertheless, giants do not, and have never existed.

I don't think that 'someone made up a ton of lies'. I think someone wrote down what he'd been told by the older generations, who'd been told from their predecessors and so on. The story is not literally true because it is completely wrong.

Yes, primitive observation thought that the sun went around the earth. We know that this is wrong now, thus, the bible is in error. If the bible is in error, it can't be the infallible word of god, and it is literally NOT true. The fact that it is exactly what we would expect from bronze age tribes to write down is exactly my point.

The Bible is not a magic book written under inspiration from an all-knowing deity. It is a collection of texts written by human beings in the bronze age. Nothing in it is out of the ordinary for its time.

Re: the bat thing. A winged creature was considered the Hebrew equivalent of 'a bird'. I'l refer you to this from CARM which I think illustrates my take on the Bible with regards to these "scientific errors".

"The Bible is not meant to be a scientific description of modern biological categories. Instead, it is often written from the perspective of what we see. In other words, it makes generic categorizations. In this case, the bat is categorized as a bird because like birds, it flies and is similar in size to most birds. If we did not know that it was a mammal, it would be natural to call it a bird. To the Hebrew of ancient times, calling it a bird was perfectly logical. But, in modern times we categorize animal species more specifically, and have categorized the bat as a mammal and not a bird.

Also, we must be aware that it is modern science that has a different classification system than ancient times. To the ancients, creatures such as a bat were considered birds since they categorized all flying animals as birds. If that is the category that they used, then they were correct. It is not an error. It is a difference of categorization procedures. The critic has imposed upon the ancient text a modern system of categorization and then said that the Bible is wrong. This is a big error in thinking."

When I was a child I used to point at planes in the sky and shout 'birdie'. Was I wrong? No! It's got wings and it's in the sky - anyone with half a brain would understand what I meant. Had I been shouting 'car' or 'water' or something else just as daft - then I would be wrong. You can apply this to the sun around the earth thing as well. These observations are in fact "literally true" if you're going on the perspective of the naked eye. You could only call the Bible "untrue" if it were to say the sun did loop de loops or that it split into two suns that remerged at the end of the day. I don't see how anyone can use this to say "therefore it's not divinely inspired". The morality issue is a far stronger argument.

Sure it's a gauge of Og's height but only that. A gauge. I'm not trying to argue for his literal existence here, I'm just trying to say it's not completely impossible/out of the ordinary. The tallest man (recorded) was approx. 9 ft. I'd say it's fair to assume he had a bed made especially for him that was maybe in between 10-11 feet long. Og however, he was a king. Whose to say he wasn't only 10 feet tall with a luxurious, kingly 13-14 footer bed? Giants do exist haha. I'd say it's fair to call anyone above 7 foot tall, 'gigantic'.

I'm of the opinion that the Bible is indeed a collection of texts written by human beings in the bronze age that could potentially have been written under inspiration from an all-knowing deity.

I know that they categorised differently back then than we do today, but the thing is, they were wrong, we are right.Birds are a subset of Theropod Dinosaurs.Bats ARE mammals (not just categorised as such, they literally are mammals). The ancient Hebrews did not know about dinosaurs and where birds fitted into the tree or life, and I don't expect them to. This brings me back to my point that the scientific errors made in the Bible are completely typical of the time. The Bible doesn't have any traces of knowledge that wasn't available at the time.

CARM are anti-evolution so they don't understand that our categorisations of animals aren't arbitrary. They're based on family trees, so it isn't simply a matter of different categorisations, but rather one is correct, and the other is incorrect. The Bible is wrong.

Robert Wadlow is the tallest confirmed human towering at 8'11". He died at age 22 because his skeleton couldn't support his mass.The bible speaks extensively about giants, but from what we can tell, it is just mythology. Other ancient cultures also spoke about giants in their mythologies too.

I can't detect a single characteristic that would lend to the belief that the bible was inspired by a deity. It's just too ordinary.

Exactly. So the Bible isn't "wrong". That's too strong/anti of a word to use. Because from a "certain point of view" (said Obi Wan) it is right. I think a better way to put it would be that some biblical viewpoints are obsolete, now that we have a more scientific/modern understanding of our world.

I entirely understand your final line. I'm hanging out for this fat chewing sesh with Josh and the lads.

So, the bible is wrong from our point of view (being educated an advanced humans), this leads me to the question of do we still need religion?

we are worshiping a bronze age god, even if the people were under the influence of this deity, god would of known how the world works and would of made their statements more believable (for us now). But instead the Bible is written from their point of view, just like everything else was written back then and just like how they saw everything back then.

Exactly. It isn't a modern religion. It's a bronze age belief system that has evolved throughout the course of human history and moulded itself to fit societal norms. You can easily see the relics of their primitive beliefs all throughout the scriptures.

What am I talking about 'modern religion'... all religions are stupid whether they were invented in the past century (Scientology) or two millennia ago.....

How are statements "the sun travels round the earth" "bat is a bird" not "believable" even now?! It is so clear to see how that conclusion could be arrived at through naked eye observation! You could make those naked eye observations today! Why the flip would God need to say "ummm excuse me, just before you write that one down Bronze Age Scribe....the earth is actually just one of many planets that orbit the sun...oh and the bat is a mammal...not a bird"Bronze Age Scribe: "ahhhh....what?"God: "don't worry, not a big concern for you. I'm just thinking of ALL THE SUPER IMPORTANT PEOPLE WHO WILL LIVE FROM 1990-2070 WHO THINK THEY ARE THE CENTRE OF THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM AND THAT SCRIPTURE SHOULD REFLECT THEIR ERA INSTEAD OF YOURS"

You have a weird way of defining wrong.wrongadjectivedeviating from truth or fact; erroneous: a wrong answer.

Believable doesn't mean that they aren't wrong.

I don't expect them to have written down what we now know to be true. This is because I expect them to write down the knowledge that was available to humans at the time, because the book was written by humans.

Immoral teachings = written by immoral humans.Incorrect statements = written by ignorant (not an insult) humans.

They're two sides of the same argument, they both work in showing that the bible is the work of men, not gods.

"Errors based on lack of scientific knowledge in the Bronze Age - therefore not divinely inspired by a moral god?"

That's not my argument. My argument is that the Bible is quite plainly and obviously the work of men. The bible is not factually accurate, and substantial portions of it happen to be highly immoral, though that wasn't the point of this series. My aim here was to show that trying to take the book at face-value is ignorant.

Immoral teachings = written by immoral humans = good argument to say that the Bible couldn't possibly be inspired by a moral godIncorrect statements = written by ignorant (not an insult) humans - not a good argument against divine inspiration as the point of view (what they mean, not what they specifically say) is coherent and one would expect an omniscient god to possess coherency.

You missed the point entirely. They may have believed that the sun rotated around the earth, and that bats were birds because they fly, but that doesn't make it true. They were wrong, their perception of the world was wrong.

The sun does not literally rise and set, the sun is literally the centre of our solar system and we orbit around it. You know this, so I'm not sure why you're trying to say that 'because they didn't know any better, they are still right'.

They were wrong back then, and they're wrong today. They thought they were right, but they didn't have access to the knowledge that we do now, but they're still WRONG.

No I'm hearing your point - but it's a redundant point to be making in the first place as your missing the points being made originally in the scripture you're attempting to critique (like CARM said).

Bronze Age scripture read in 21st century English by a 21st century Kiwi is literally (certainly at face-value) wrong. We are both agreed on this as is the whole world - unless someone wants to try and prove that the bat isn't a mammal and that the sun orbits the earth. Good luck to them.

The Bronzies never believed the sun rotated around the earth, they weren't even aware of the earth's spherical nature to even imagine how the sun might orbit it in the first place! Neither did they didn't think bats were birds because they flew. They simply observed certain creatures had wings and flew with them. They are right in their observations.

This is what scripture as they read it meant:

"If I were to stand in the same place for approx. 12 hours and face north, I would see a bright yellow circular orb appear in the east, slowly rising until it was more or less above me, then it would proceed to descend until it completely disappeared into the west. I know this as day - it's when I do the majority of my work as I need the light"

That's a literally true statement. Still is literally true today.

"I'm observing a creature that we have decided to call a bat. Look at it. It flies. Look at it. It has wings that flap that it uses to fly."

That's also a literally true statement. Still is literally true today.

The geocentric model is geocentricism according to your very link. And it is from the Greeks and is not to be confused with the Flat Earth model that predates it. I would say the Old Teste especially was written from a Flat Earth point of view.

All I'm trying to say is that the Bible is not trying to say these things either. It's not making hypothesizing a flat earth or a non-mammal bat.

It's just saying:

"If I were to stand in the same place for approx. 12 hours and face north, I would see a bright yellow circular orb appear in the east, slowly rising until it was more or less above me, then it would proceed to descend until it completely disappeared into the west."

"I'm observing a creature that we have decided to call a bat. Look at it. It flies. Look at it. It has wings that flap that it uses to fly."

Bats are contained in a list of a type of animal they aren't allowed to eat. All of the animals on this list are birds, except for the bats. If it were a list simply of winged animals that they weren't allowed to eat it would have things like locusts written down too.

The fable of the sun stopping in the sky is much more telling of their conception of the relationship between sun and earth. God holds the sun in the sky to allow them to fight for longer or something stupid.

Needless to say, this never happened, like most of what is written in the book of Joshua. So this is not based upon observation, but rather based upon their faulty concept of the solar system.

You wouldn't find locusts on that list at all - as locusts were permissible as food. Bats are more similar in size to the birds than the flying insects listed directly underneath and are therefore slotted on to the end of the "bird" list.

Read Isaiah 2. Bats are mentioned right next to "rodents" in this passage.

If the sun can literally "rise" and "set" - it can also literally "stop". Of course what would scientifically be occurring is the earth ceasing to move. If I believe in a god at all I definitely believe in a god that is capable of doing that.

But like you say - I'd assume it's a fable also. I can only imagine there might be masses of negative effects if the earth were to stop moving altogether.

The passage in Isaiah reveals that they observed similarity between rodents and bats. They lumped them together. "to the rodents and bats" "to the cats and dogs" etc. Poems and prophetic messages are allowed to (and in many cases do) contain literal observations.

Let's look at the whole passage in the NIV from Leviticus then shall we?

13 " 'These are the birds you are to detest and not eat because they are detestable: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, 14 the red kite, any kind of black kite, 15 any kind of raven, 16 the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, 17 the little owl, the cormorant, the great owl, 18 the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, 19 the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat. [b]

20 " 'All flying insects that walk on all fours are to be detestable to you. 21 There are, however, some winged creatures that walk on all fours that you may eat: those that have jointed legs for hopping on the ground. 22 Of these you may eat any kind of locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper. 23 But all other winged creatures that have four legs you are to detest.

The footnote for [b] says "The precise identification of some of the birds, insects and animals in this chapter is uncertain."

Yes.. Uncertain.. Bats are contained in the list with birds, the list ends. Then is the part about winged insects that walk on all fours, which there are none of. They don't exist.

Then it says to detest winged creatures that have four legs. Bats are the only winged creature that could be said to have four legs, although the front legs evolved into wings. Strange though, that bats are mentioned with the birds, and then "winged creatures with four legs" goes without an example.

It's fairly safe to say that they had no idea what on earth they were talking about.

Ok I'll try and explain the whole 'everything on earth will die' deal.

You know the feeling you get when cornering in a car whilst travelling fast? You get pushed into the door of the car or into the other person depending on what way the car is turning.This is the result of your momentum, lets say you are going around a 90 degree corner at 30 km/H, your momentum is in one direction, and the car is changing direction, you experience deceleration in one direction and acceleration in another, and the effect you feel is what is known as g-force. 1g is equivalent to the effect of earths gravitational pull, 9.8m/s^2.

The earth travels at 30 km/s in its orbit around the sun, that's 3600 times as fast as our little car was travelling. This is compounded by the fact that the equatorial velocity of the earth rotation on its axis is around 1700 km/h. In the case of the earth suddenly being stopped in its tracks, we're not talking about a gradual deceleration, we're talking about infinite deceleration. Imagine a jet-plane crashing into an immovable, indestructible wall.This is much worse.

The superficial effect of instant stoppage would be that everything on one side of the earth would be squashed flat, everything on the other side would go flying into space and the stuff on the sides would probably go flying into space too.

The earth would be ravaged by earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal waves on a scale that I can't even begin to imagine.

I think it's safer to say that they knew exactly what they were talking about and that it's us that struggle to understand what they mean a lot of the time - considering the fact that they wrote it thousands of years ago and we're reading it thousands of years later.

Here's a webpage with some thoughts on that passage. Apologetics of course.

They basically had two excuses for the error, neither of which are very believable.1) They didn't see that there were in fact 6 legs.2) They intentionally didn't count the front legs.

So either their god was blind or stupid. It makes much more sense to realise that these laws weren't given to the Israelites by god, but rather conceived in the minds of men, who made mistakes (and lots of them).

Even if I conceded the point to them about the author making a distinction between the larger hind legs of grasshoppers crickets and locusts, it still makes no sense in light of "But all other winged creatures that have four legs you are to detest."

In trying to address the issue of other types of insect that have 'four legs' they try to dodge the bullet by saying "there are millions of insect species" and the one example they gave is fallacious. If you look at a honey bee, it is quite obvious that the hind legs are in fact legs.So it basically just boils down to the author either a) being blind b) being stupid or c) making a mistake.

I can't believe I've wasted so much time discussing one meaningless error in a book that has thousands of them.

It doesn't make sense in light of the next part because other winged insects don't have different legs, they're mostly the same.

I've wasted so much time because for some reason you're vehemently defending something that I have a feeling you agree with me on. That some dick made a mistake, and some more dicks today want to take that mistake literally and make up retarded rationalisations to explain it away.

I think some intelligent Bronzie(s) made a distinction on winged insects between what 4 of their legs are used for and what the other 2 are used for, and some more intelligent Post-modernies want to understand scripture the same way Bronzies did and teach this to people who are confused on the issue.

Firstly, I do not accept that the Bible is the literal word of God. Only fundies think that.

If you accept that the Bible is NOT the literal word of God, but a product of its time, then of course all the errors which you've been pointing out are not "proof" that God does not exist but proof that the observable knowledge which people held to be true back then differs with our contemporary scientific knowledge.

This is like saying that Darwin was wrong because he made the mistake of dismissing mass extinctions as artifacts of an imperfect geologic record, another mistake in assuming that species diversity, like individuals of a given species, tends to increase exponentially with time, and a third mistake when regarding biotic interactions as the major cause of species extinction. Three strikes there, he must be wrong about everything ... only people don't think this (well, maybe some people do) - instead, they realise that science was still in its infancy so errors were made which have now been picked up.

Now, of course Darwin is not God, so he's allowed to make mistakes, hence the legitimacy of your argument against the literal interpretationists (which I think you pointed out are the target of your post). In this instance you and Ryan are engaged in a debate similar to the one you and I had a month or so back - debating slightly different points from vastly different positions meaning that whatever one person says is focussed on their understanding of what the argument is about, but of course it makes no sense in reslving the argument which the other thinks they're involved in.